Wings Over Talera - Charles Allen Gramlich [35]
“Thought it was what?” I asked, stepping around the altar and walking slowly toward him.
“Thought it was them,” the man said, his body shaking, his voice barely a whisper. “They would...need.”
“Them who?” I asked. “And what would they need?”
The door against which Diken Graye leaned boomed loudly as something massive hit it from the other side. Brass nails squealed; hinges rattled; the wood creaked and cracked. Graye jumped back, eyes dark and wild. Valyan muttered an explosive oath. I half crouched, the sword leaping to my hand with a whicker. Something slithered like wet leather along the outside wall. And the wall bulged.
“Them!” the old man suddenly screamed. He tore loose from Kreeg’s grip with frenzied strength and ran toward the altar. Kreeg hardly noticed, his mouth open and startled as he spun to face the door.
That door seemed to...breathe. Planks strained. A square nail popped free and clattered at my feet. A second followed, leaving holes through which spilled an intense reek of salt, and fish, and rotted seaweed. I took a step back, unable to stop myself, my heart pounding. The others were around me, faces twisted, muscles bunched like wire.
“What devils are these?” Kreeg blurted.
“Perhaps we’d better—” Graye started.
“We’ll stand,” I snapped, cutting him off. “Anything that can come through that door can die on the threshold.”
I don’t know if they believed me. But they stood. I don’t know if I believed myself. But I held my sword ready.
Something...snuffled against the door. Then a series of thumps raced along the wall, each one softer than before, each one higher along the wall than a man could reach comfortably. Kreeg growled. The mist in the room swirled and eddied, as if stirred. The skin went cold beneath the hair lifting at my neck.
I turned. A gagging sound came from the direction of the altar. The old man was suspended over the polished wood, his face purpling, bloating. Something rope-like and liquid-looking had wrapped itself around his neck, reaching above his head into the shadows that hovered near the ceiling. I looked up, toward the skylight. And saw there the face of an angel. Or a demon.
The door behind me split with a gunshot crack and buckled inward off its hinges. Splinters sleeted. Something dark came through.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
DEMON-HAUNTED DARK
Kreeg bellowed—in anger. Valyan and Graye shouted, their voices surprised, any meaning lost in shock. Forgetting the angel/demon whose face loomed in the skylight, I spun about to see some massive thing thrusting through the door that had burst inward beneath its weight. Kreeg bellowed again—in pain—and went down beneath an axe-shaped head, scrabbling desperately to keep recurved fangs from tearing his face off.
A leg as thick as an ale barrel thrust against Valyan, knocking him sideways into me. I caught him, spun him toward safety, then lunged forward, blade sizzling in the light as it went in beneath the creature’s shoulder and plunged deep.
The thing roared, like fire exploding into a dry tree. It pulled back then, for a moment, nearly twisting the blade from my hand. I hung on, jerked the sword free in a shower of red froth. The beast was a laith, though bigger than most of its ilk. Its head arched above me, snouted and fanged like a moray eel, with eyes wide set beneath a broad forehead. Those eyes were stone white with dagger-point pupils; they looked sick and maddened. And sick or maddened the beast must have been to come up from the sea’s depths and attack on land.
The laith snapped at me and I slashed it across the mouth to stop it, cutting through its fleshy upper lip to leave a salmon pink arc behind. The rest of it was an iridescent black, like oil on water. From the corner of my eye, I saw Graye grab at Kreeg’s arm to try and pull him to safety. The laith glimpsed him, lashed out with a foot that knocked the mercenary sprawling and then smashed down to pin Kreeg like an insect beneath it.
An arrow hissed past my shoulder to sprout like a quill from the thing’s right leg.